Sony freezes 93,000 accounts after latest security breach

The Sony Entertainment Network, scene of so much hack-related turmoil this summer, has been hit by another cyber attack. In a post to the PlayStation blog, Philip Reitinger, the chief security officer for Sony, said that approximately 93,000 affected accounts have been locked down to prevent further damage, including 60,000 accounts on the PSN or SEN, and 33,000 on the Sony Online Entertainment hub, home to a lot of online role-playing games.

"These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources," Reitinger wrote. "In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks."

Reitinger stressed that credit card information was not at risk. He said that as a preventative measure, some users would have to reset their password; if you're one of the 93,000, you'll get an email from Sony, asking you to update your information.

This is not the first time, of course, that Sony has been hit by cyber marauders. Earlier this year, Sony servers weathered a major league breach, which exposed upward of 100 million Sony accounts, and sent the gaming world spiraling into a tizzy.

At the time, analysts estimated that the attack could eventually come to cost Sony $2 billion in cash (plus the less-easily-measured hit to the company's rep). Compared to the 100 million accounts affected this summer, 93,000 is a relatively small number. More over, this time around, Sony has been especially quick to lock down any vulnerable accounts. The exact scope of this hack is not yet clear, but so far, Sony seems to be handling it well.

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